Atlas: Difference between revisions

[[Image:Atlas.jpg|thumb|270px|Map view of the San Francisco bay area]]

==Introduction==

The '''Atlas''' program lets FlightGear users display a real-time "moving-map" of their flight. Atlas is an independent software project, distributed under the same free (GPL) software license as FlightGear.

==Installation==

===Installing on Windows===

For example, download '''atlas-0.3.0-win32-setup.exe''', and run it. The installer will prompt you for the FlightGear directory. If you installed FlightGear in the default directory, "C:\Program Files\FlightGear", accept the default setting. If you don't know your FlightGear directory, you can right-click your FlightGear icon, click properties then look at the "target". Your root FlightGear directory is the part of the target before the text "\bin\win32\fgrun.exe")

===Installing on Linux===

===Creating the Maps===

Atlas puts together the whole map display from smaller pieces of the map, called "tiles". Before running Atlas for the first time, all of the map tiles used by Atlas must be created from the scenery data installed in FlightGear. The program used to create the tiles is called "map", and it is installed automatically as part of the Atlas installation.

Depending on the amount of scenery involved, and the level of detail requested, running the "map" process take anywhere from a few seconds to a few hours. Fortunately, this process does not need to be done often, only right after Atlas is installed, or after new scenery is added to FlightGear.

This example uses the default FlightGear directory for Windows, C:\Program Files\FlightGear. If you have FlightGear installed somewhere else, substitute your directory in the instructions below.

The map program has a lot commands-line options. To see them type...

*'''Note 1:''' The map process can be much faster on some PC's using '''--headless''' option, which does not display the maps as they are being created. However, on other PC's, this causes an error, and the process will not run. Remove the '''--headless''' option if you get such an error.

*'''Note 2:''' Some PC's get errors when they write program files. If you are getting this error, try Progra~1 instead of Program Files.

===Run Atlas===

Atlas can be run by clicking on the shortcut set up by the install wizard, or from the command line. From the command prompt in Windows, enter:

In the [[FlightGear Wizard]] where you select settings before starting FlightGear, on the page after selecting your airport there is a check box option for Atlas, check it. In the "port" box enter 5500. If Atlas is running on the same computer as FlightGear, you can use the IP address 127.0.0.1 If Atlas is running on another computer, enter the IP address of that computer. (To look up the IP address of a computer, open the command prompt, and enter "ipconfig" as a command to display the IP address).

Once you have Atlas and FlightGear set to use the same port number (5500 by default), run FlightGear. As you fly around in FlightGear, Atlas will update your position on the map several times per second.

===Keys===

==Similar Software==

* [http://rubyforge.org/projects/fgmap Flightgear Mapping]

==External links==

* [http://atlas.sourceforge.net The Atlas website]